What are the ethical considerations regarding the privacy and control of consumer information and big data, especially in the aftermath of recent large-scale data breaches?
This course provides a framework to analyze these concerns as you examine the ethical and privacy implications of collecting and managing big data. Explore the broader impact of the data science field on modern society and the principles of fairness, accountability and transparency as you gain a deeper understanding of the importance of a shared set of ethical values. You will examine the need for voluntary disclosure when leveraging metadata to inform basic algorithms and/or complex artificial intelligence systems while also learning best practices for responsible data management, understanding the significance of the Fair Information Practices Principles Act and the laws concerning the "right to be forgotten."
This course will help you answer questions such as who owns data, how do we value privacy, how to receive informed consent and what it means to be fair.
Data scientists and anyone beginning to use or expand their use of data will benefit from this course. No particular previous knowledge needed.

DD

Very good course with excellent examples and a balanced approach. My only issue was that the pace of the presentation was a little too slow at times. Content-wise, excellent.

JM

Jul 01, 2018

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

This course is short, slow, and easy, but I ranked it five stars because the content is important in today's growing reliance on data science.

From the lesson

Data Ownership

Who owns data about you? We'll explore that question in this module. A few examples of personal data include copyrights for biographies; ownership of photos posted online, Yelp, Trip Advisor, public data capture, and data sale. We'll also explore the limits on recording and use of data.

Taught By

H.V. Jagadish

Bernard A Galler Collegiate Professor

Transcript

RadioShack was a popular company selling electronic products, and they went out of business. When they were in bankruptcy, their assets were being sold. While they were in business, they had collected information about millions of customers. When they entered bankruptcy, they wanted to sell the assessment information. Thirty-six attorney generals of states sued to stop that sale. The question is, when a company enters bankruptcy, how does any privacy agreement they may have made while they were in business still apply? Well, it turns out this was actually not the first time that this question had come up. A few years earlier, a company called Toysmart, which was one of the dot com bubble companies on the web, had gone out of business and the very same question had been raised and addressed. There is in the US, actually law in terms of how bankruptcy proceedings should be conducted in light of the Toysmart case, which says that there is an ombudsperson appointed, whose job is to make sure that the way in which data assets are sold is compliant with whatever privacy agreements have been made by the company while it was in business. Given that this was the case, the creditors of RadioShack entered into an agreement with the attorney general who sued them, and there was a deal, where there was a complicated opt-in, opt-out arrangement made with respect to the customers having their data transferred to a new company that was buying this information asset. I think the point really from this takeaway is, as a matter of social consensus and as a matter of ethics, we believe that things that we enter into as agreements when a company is in business, should survive even when the company ceases being in business and enters into bankruptcy. At least, in some circumstances and in some countries, there are now laws that support this social expectation.

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